The U.S. athletic shoe industry uses a variety of high-tech methods to facilitate design: specialized laboratory machines, objective athletic tests, and high-speed photography, film and video. Scientific techniques designers employ include motion analysis (kinematics), ground reaction forces and loading rates (kinetics), foot-pressure measurement (in-shoe and external), ankle range of motion (ROM), foot morphology, and electromyography. Designers need computer-aided design and drafting software and the state-of-the-art computer equipment to operate it.
Designers need materials and equipment to fabricate prototype athletic shoes that build on advances in three primary areas: biomechanics, the study of human move ment and related forces; physiology, the study of the integration of the body's energy systems and responses to environmental stresses; and sensory/perception, the subjective evaluation of product attributes such as cushioning, flexibility, stability, traction, and durability.
Design prototypes are fabricated in-house. Prototypes are laboratory tested for cushioning, flexibility, stability, traction, and durability. Athletic shoe companies buy machines to test seam strain, adhesion, heat absorption, and water permeability. Durability tests are important as they provide a benchmark, a method to determine under identical conditions how one shoe compares to another. Durability tests are repeatable, and data acquisition systems can accumulate performance information. Athletic shoe companies buy machines to simulate specific conditions such as toe drag on a tennis shoe. Gait equipment is used to study the overall performance of the athlete in the shoe and the forces the lower extremities encounter. In addition to laboratory tests, prototypes are tested by actual athletes before shoes go into production overseas. Nike has a nearly 13,000 square feet design department referred to informally as its Innovation Kitchen on its 175-acre headquarters campus. One wall displays every Air Jordan model ever made. Nike design materials include high-speed video cameras that capture soccer kick data at 1,000 frames per second and a scanner that produces a perfect 3D digital image of any human foot in just seconds. Nike testing surfaces include a huge section of regulation maple basketball flooring, artificial soccer turf, and a 70-meter running track. In 2001 Nike used the equipment to design and introduce Nike Shox, a system of columns of engineered foam that provide superior cushioning.
Other materials needed by the U.S. athletic shoe industry are computers to track the complicated worldwide supply chain. Since 100 percent of athletic shoes are imported, primarily from China, all key U.S. players have manufacturing operations abroad. For example, in 2004 Nike had 900-plus supplier factories in fifty countries. All players need materials to build top-flight information systems to handle logistics and to manage the supply chain. Nike, for instance, designs and launches 120,000 products in four cycles per year. Nike spent $500 million in 2004 to modernize its technology system to track supply chain operations as it moves goods from its 900-plus factories to retailers. The $500 million helped Nike get products to customers faster and cheaper. Lead time for getting new sneaker styles to market was cut from 6 to 9 months.
Because 100 percent of athletic shoes are manufactured abroad, and because Nike controls an estimated 50 percent of the U.S. sporting goods market, in the late 1990s Nike was criticized about sweatshop labor conditions in China and Vietnam, the low-wage countries that produce 65 percent of its footwear. Business Week reported that by 2004 Nike had a staff of close to 100 inspectors to visit factories, grade them on labor standards, and work with managers to improve problems. Nike's staff performed 600 factory audits between 2002, when it built up its in-house monitoring staff, and 2004, including repeat visits to those with the most problems.
